Substack Newsletter Scraper: Posts & Stats

Scrape Substack posts from any newsletter: publish date, paywall status, reactions, comments and word count — plus the full text of free posts.

Works with substack.com subdomains and custom domains alike; just give the name.

What can you do with Substack newsletters data?

• Competitive research — how often a newsletter publishes, how long the posts are, what gets reactions.
• Content research — pull the full text of free posts for analysis or summarising.
• Track a list of newsletters — onlyNewPosts on a schedule gives you only what's new.
• Find the paywall line — isFree and audience show exactly what is gated.

How to scrape Substack newsletters

Field	What it does
publications	"lennysnewsletter", "astralcodexten", or a full URL
maxPostsPerPublication	Newest first
includePostText	Full text of free posts
onlyFreePosts	Drop subscriber-only posts
publishedAfter, keywords	Date and title/subtitle filters
onlyNewPosts	Monitoring mode

What the Substack newsletters output looks like

{
  "publication": "www.lennysnewsletter.com",
  "publicationName": null,
  "postId": "214360366",
  "title": "60+ new creative growth ideas",
  "subtitle": "How to stand out when everyone is running the same playbook",
  "url": "https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/60-creative-growth-ideas",
  "slug": "60-creative-growth-ideas",
  "publishedAt": "2026-09-15T12:45:28.445Z",
  "type": "newsletter",
  "audience": "only_paid",
  "isFree": false,
  "isPaywalled": true,
  "wordCount": 5674,
  "reactionCount": 383,
  "commentCount": 6,
  "coverImage": "https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!NVVg!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F20cbbe62-5c82-4d4f-a316-de9b885e56f2_1456x970.png",
  "authors": [],
  "description": "How to stand out when everyone is running the same playbook",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-21T07:25:01.710Z"
}

How fast is it and how much does it cost to scrape Substack newsletters?

45 posts from 3 publications took 29 seconds, including resolving each name to its real domain.

Limits you should know about

• Paywalled posts return every metadata field, but no body text — that is what the paywall is.
• A publication that has moved off Substack is reported with a warning and not charged.

Ready-made examples

Open one, change the fields, press Start — nothing to configure:

• Scrape Substack posts

Frequently asked questions about scraping Substack newsletters

Do I need an API key or a login?

No. Paste your input, press Start. There is nothing to connect and no account on the target site to create.

How do I export the results?

Every run produces a dataset you can download as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML, or read through the Apify API from your own code. You can also connect it to Make, Zapier or n8n.

Can I run this on a schedule?

Yes. Apify schedules run it every hour, day or week without you being there. With the monitoring option on, you only get posts published since the last run.

Can I call it from Python or JavaScript?

Yes — the Apify API runs any Actor and returns the dataset, and the official Python and JavaScript clients wrap it in a few lines. AI agents can call it too, through Apify's MCP server.

What does it cost?

You pay per result, not per hour. Filters are applied before anything is charged, so narrowing the input directly lowers the bill. Pages that cannot be read are reported in the log and never charged.

Is this data public?

Everything collected here is what Substack shows to anyone without logging in. Check the target site's terms and the rules that apply to you before using the data commercially.

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